A man buys a brand new Grand Cherokee for $30,000+, and has $400.00+ in monthly payments. He’s pretty proud of this rig and gets ahold of his friend to do some male bonding with the new ride. They go duck hunting and of course all the lakes are frozen. These two Atomic Brains go to the lake with their guns, the dog, the beer and of course the new vehicle. They drive out onto the ice. Now, they want to make some kind of a natural landing area to attract ducks – something the decoys will float on. Remember it’s all ice, and in order to make a hole large enough to interest a flock of ducks – a hole big enough to entice ducks to land, they needed to use a little more than an ice hole drill… Sooo, out of the back of the brand-new Jeep Grand Cherokee comes a stick of dynamite with a short 40-second fuse. Now to their credit, these two rocket scientists DID take into consideration that if they placed the stick of dynamite on the ice at a location far from where they (and the new Grand Cherokee) would be waiting and ran back quickly, they would risk slipping on the ice as they ran from the imminent explosion and could possibly go up in smoke with the resulting blast. After a little deliberation, they come up with lighting and THROWING the dynamite, which is what they end up doing. Remember a couple of paragraphs back when I mentioned the vehicle, the beer, the guns AND THE DOG???? Yes, the dog. The driver’s pet Black Lab (used for retrieving – especially things thrown by the owner). You guessed it, the dog takes off at a high rate of doggy speed on the ice, reaching the stick of dynamite with the burning 40-second fuse about the time it hits the ice – all to the woe of the two idiots which are now yelling, stomping, waving arms and wondering what the hell to do now… The dog is happy and now heads back toward the „hunters“ with the stick of dynamite. I think we all can picture the ever-increasing concern on the part of the brain trust, as the loyal Labrador Retriever approaches. The Bozos now are REALLY waving their arms – yelling even louder and generally feeling kinda panicked… Now finally one of the guys decides to think – something that neither had done before this moment, grabs a shotgun and shoots the dog. This sounds better than it really is, because the shotgun was loaded with #8 duck shot and hardly effective enough to stop a Black Lab. The dog DID stop for a moment, slightly confused, but then continued on. Another shot, and this time the dog – still standing, became REALLY confused and of course scared… Thinking that these two Nobel Prize Winners have gone TOTALLY INSANE, the pooch takes off to find cover with a now extremely short fuse still burning on the stick of dynamite. The cover the dog finds? Underneath the brand new Grand Cherokee worth 30-some thousand dollars the $400.00+ monthly payment vehicle that is sitting nearby on the lake ice. BOOM! Dog dies, vehicle sinks to bottom of lake, and these two „Co-Leaders of the Known Universe“ are left standing there with this „I can’t EVEN believe this happened to me“ look on their faces. Later, the owner of the vehicle calls his insurance company and is promptly informed that sinking a vehicle in a lake by illegal use of explosives is NOT covered on his policy…He had yet to make his first car payment. GRAVITY KILLS A 22-year-old Reston man was found dead yesterday after he tried to use accessory straps (the stretchy little ropes with hooks on each end) to bungee jump off a 70-foot railroad trestle, police said. Fairfax County police said Eric A. Barcia, a fast-food worker, taped a bunch of these straps together, wrapped an end around one foot, anchored the other end to the trestle at Lake Accotink Park, jumped … and hit the pavement. Warren Carmichael, a police spokesman, said investigators think Barcia was alone because his car was found nearby. „The length of the cord that he had assembled was greater than the distance between the trestle and the ground.“ Police say the apparent cause of death was „major trauma“. An autopsy is scheduled for later in the week. LAUNCHED ON THE FOURTH OF JULY Three young men in Oklahoma were enjoying the coming Fourth of July holiday and wanted to test fire some fireworks. The only real problem was, their launch pad and seating arrangements were atop a several hundred thousand gallon fuel distillation storage tank. Oddly enough, fumes were ignited, producing a fireball seen for miles. They were launched several hundred feet into the air and found dead some 250 yards from their respective seats. DON’T ASK GOD TO PROVE HIMSELF, HE JUST MIGHT A lawyer and two buddies were fishing on Caddo Lake in Texas when a lightning storm hit. Most of the other boats immediately headed for the shore, but not our friend the lawyer. Alone on the rear of his aluminum bass boat with his buddies, this individual stood up, spread his arms wide and shouted: „HERE I AM LORD, LET ME HAVE IT!“ Needless to say, God delivered. The other two passengers on the boat survived the lightning strike with minor burns. THE BOYS OF SUMMER A man in Alabama died from rattlesnake bites. Big deal you may say, but there’s a twist here that makes him a candidate. It seems he and a friend were playing catch with a rattlesnake. The friend (a future Darwin Awards candidate himself) was hospitalized. THEY SAY THOSE THINGS WILL KILL YOU Not much was given to me on this unlucky fellow, but he qualifies nonetheless. You see, there was a gentleman from Korea who was killed by his cell phone … more or less. He was doing the usual „walking and talking“ when he walked into a tree and managed to somehow break his neck. Keep that in mind the next time you decide to drive and dial at the same time. GOT A LIGHT? In a west Texas town, employees in a medium-sized warehouse noticed the smell of gas. Sensibly, management evacuated the building, extinguishing all potential sources of ignition — lights, power, etc. After the building had been evacuated, two technicians from the gas company were dispatched. Upon entering the building, they found they had difficulty navigating in the dark. To their frustration, none of the lights worked. Witnesses later described the scene of one of the technicians reaching into his pocket and retrieving an object that resembled a lighter. Upon operation of the lighter-like object, the gas in the warehouse exploded, sending pieces of it up to three miles away. Nothing was found of the technicians, but the lighter was virtually untouched by the explosion. The technician that was suspected of causing the explosion had never been thought of as „bright“ by his peers.
